Hey guys - Lurking for a bit and decided to join.
Around the time Lion came along, I and several others were concerned about Rosetta going away. For me, it was Freehand. This very important design tool supports my furniture business. With years invested in the app and Adobe's refusal to support, the first step was booting a 10.6.8 clone on my 2009 iMac via firewire. This will work until I upgrade the desktop machine, so the Mini seemed like a good solution over keeping a second desktop. As long as the Mini Display Port or Tbolt connection allows Target Display, I'll be OK for a few more years.

Putting off the purchase until now didn't really help the budget. I was a little shocked to discover the 2010 is selling for close to it's original retail and in some cases well over. Apple posts a refurb on occasion, but they go really quick. Very frustrating, but I managed to grab a used unit for a very reasonable price under the base model retail with a 2.66 and 8G ram. Perhaps I'll update the drive at some point.

I get the impression I'm not alone when it comes to keeping a 2nd machine on Snow Leopard and updating the primary Mac. For now, the 'Rescue Mission' is looking good. Hope there's some mileage left on the used Mac Mini.

Thanks - The machine arrived today and was set up to task in a 3rd system for negative scanning for the next week.
After this job it will be reformatted for it's main task.

I agree with everyone's opinion about the overall speed. It feels very much like an older 13 inch Macbook Pro. The stock 320 Hitachi drive is silent but slow. That said, it's just fine for my needs running scan software now and Freehand later.
A scorpio black might be nice in the future.

It will be a week or more before I plug it into my 27 inch iMac or perhaps test it on a 56 inch in the TV room. I never really considered using it on the big TV, but now that it's here..hmm?